The Quell Announcement
by SongofFete
Summary: "Every District has managed to scape up at least one female and one male victor." Katniss Everdeen wasn't the only uncontested tribute for the Third Quarter Quell. This is how the other sole survivors reacted the night of the announcement.


District 3. Wiress

Wiress had watched the announcement with huge, wide eyes. I didn't have to be sitting next to her to feel the fear radiating off her. She didn't have to say a word for me to know how she was feeling.

The Capitol had never understood her, assuming she was crazy or incapable of normal human relationships. That had worked in her favour; they mostly ignored her in favour of my inventions. But she was the only female victor District Three had ever produced, so she had no choice. They were going to force her back into the games.

I was going with her. There was no other option; Sparky was too old and with Vision functionally blind since the climax of his games (oh, how the Capitol had loved that irony; how confused they had been when Vision had failed to laugh along with the sixteenth person to make the comment on his Victory tour) I was all that was left. I wondered how far in advance Plutarch had known about the Quell; whether he had considered telling me before deciding that letting it come as a shock to everyone would be...what was the phrase? Plausible deniability. No, no, of course he wasn't in contact with any of the victors. No, he knew nothing about uprisings.

The doorbell rang, just a few seconds earlier than I had estimated it would sound. I made no move; the bell was nothing more than a courtesy and moments later I heard footsteps and the slightly hesitant click, click of Vision's cane on the hall floor. He hadn't even reached his favourite chair when the bell sounded again and a surer set of footsteps followed him in.

"So." Sparky eased himself onto the sofa on Wiress's other side. She had still shown no response to the television. I glanced up and turned it off with a word of command.

"So."

"You want that I go back in?" Vision spoke in a monotone; a half-smirk showing he already knew the answer. It had an unexpected effect.

"No no no no no no no no..." Wiress continued until she ran out of breath then started anew, whether in response to Vision, the only victor she had ever brought home, or finally having processed the Quell announcement we couldn't tell. Sparky reached for her plastic cup of water and put it into her hands, helped her raise it to her lips. Her frantic muttering subsided into anxious gasps and she began to rock back and forth.

"Wiress!" She jumped visibly and stared in my direction, unblinking "I'm going in with you. Remember the Mockingjay. It's going to be alright"

"Tick tock?" She said that a lot these days. I assumed it was another of those phrases she enjoyed the sound of, like the time she repeated "eleven lemons" for nearly three weeks. I nodded.

"Yes, tick tock, remember? Tick tock, you and me. Tick tock, we have a job to do..."

District 5. Felix

He's spent most of the past half year drunk, since the day his daughter ate the berries and died. The alcohol numbs the pain of knowing he couldn't save her and the raw hatred he feels for the boy from twelve who should have died in her place.

When the announcement is read out he feels hope for the first time. Either he's going to kill the boy or he's going to kill the girl and let him know how much it hurts to lose the person you loved most in the world.

District 6. Leda

Whenever there was a mandatory viewing all three District victors gathered together to watch. Technically they had their own houses, but Tyndareus and Tullius spent so much time at Leda's they sometimes didn't go home for weeks at a time.

Leda had been fascinated by the wedding dresses, giving her opinion on each to the men, and by the time the third one was shown she'd opened her massive makeup box and was pulling out the colours she would have chosen if she'd been allowed such a responsibility. She was just trying out one of her own eyeshadows on the back of Tullius's hand to show what she had in mind when the announcer said they should stay tuned.

There were no more pretty dresses, so Leda continued painting. Tyndareus went out to the kitchen and came back with tea and two kinds of cakes, the special ones that he and Leda liked, and regular bakery cupcakes for Tullius because he didn't need the same sort of help they did. They were well into a comfortable tea party, all seated on the floor and painting each others' faces when they heard the Quell announcement.

There was silence then. Leda put down her half-eaten third cake, her appetite quite gone. Most of the time she managed not to think about the games. The morphling was good for that, and one of the only good things about being a victor was that she could afford as much as she wanted. It was good for other things, too. It let her wander into places she really wasn't supposed to be and overhear things she really wasn't supposed to know about, and it let her make special phone calls to a select group of her fellow victors. The sort of phone calls that, if anyone overheard, would imagine she was just talking about a drug-induced dream and definitely not using certain codewords to pass on information.

She felt sad for those children from District Twelve. They definitely weren't rebels, she could see that. The girl was angry, but she wasn't planning to overthrow the Capitol. Leda's friends, on the other hand...

"Mama Leda, I don't want to play the games again" Tullius said sadly, pulling her sleeve. Leda didn't know what to say. She didn't want to either, but she'd won a full forty years before the slow, simple orphan who now spent most of his time in her house, whereas he was only twenty five. Albeit twenty five with the mind of a twelve year old. Before she could answer Tyndareus answered

"Don't worry, son. You don't have to. Remember how you've always wanted to be a mentor and we said you weren't old enough yet? Well this year you can sit in the mentors' room on the special chairs that spin around and send the presents"

"I get to go to the Capitol?"

"That's right. Don't worry, I'll tell you what to do. Like in the games remember? You did what Mama Leda told you and everything was alright, wasn't it?"

Satisfied, Tullius smiled and reached for another cupcake. Leda took a deep breath then reached across and squeezed Tyndareus's hand.

District 7. Johanna

Blight had watched the announcement alone and with an increasing sense of foreboding. It seemed obvious to him that the Quell had been fixed. It was just too perfect, the synchronicity and timing right after the near-rebellion of last year's games too ideal for Snow for it to be anything other than pre-planned.

He poured a second glass of wine and stared blankly at the now-silent screen. It was odds-on he would be going back into the arena, and the odds certainly weren't in his favour that he would be coming out again.

"Well this sucks" he affirmed to the empty room before draining his glass.

There was a violent hammering on his front door. As he leapt to his feet, heart pounding the hammering changed to kicking, accompanied by impressively colourful language. Ah. Nothing to worry about, then. If anyone in Snow's government suspected District Seven's victors were discussing his downfall with other districts they wouldn't be swearing and screaming as they tried to break his door down.

They also wouldn't have Johanna's voice.

The lock gave way when he was still eight feet from the door and Seven's youngest victor practically fell into his hallway. The expletives didn't miss a beat.

"F_ Snow and his f_ government! How the f_ dare they f_ do this to us! F_s already murdered my entire f_ family when I wouldn't _ _ _ a sixty eight year old f_ _ in a _!" she slammed the now broken door (which bounced back off the ruined frame) and stormed right into Blight's sitting room, snatching up the remaining wine and drinking straight from the bottle

"How the f_ do they expect us to f_ fight against each other, the f_ _s? Isn't once enough? Now we have to..." there was the briefest pause as something else apparently occurred to her "And f_ One and Two as well! You can bet those f_s aren't being forced back into some _ arena! F_s gonna be fighting over who gets to go back in again! F_... I just... F_!" with a scream she hurled the bottle at the wall, where it hit a full-length mirror and sent shards of glass and red wine in all directions, and then, unexpectedly, Johanna Mason crumpled to the floor, sobbing hysterically.

Blight had seen her cry real tears precisely twice before. He waited the space of five seconds before dropping to the floor beside her and pulling her into a hug, holding her in silence while she shook and wiped her nose on the sleeve of his fine linen shirt. They stayed that way while it grew dark outside and the sonorous hooting told them that the forest owls were beginning their nightly hunt.

"Think it'll be you or Rowan?" Johanna's voice was little more than a croak.

"Does it matter? Neither of us got much chance of coming out again. But you? You're gonna make it, kid. You're a survivor."

"Sentimental f_."

"You got it."

"You gonna make me clear that up?"

"Like anyone can make you do a thing you don't want to"

"Except the f_ president"

"Give 'em hell, kid."

There was silence for the space of three owl calls. And then

"If you ever tell anyone about this I'm going to rip your _ off and shove them down your _, you know that?"

"I wouldn't expect anything else."

District 8. Woof

Woof had fallen asleep eighteen minutes into the Katniss Everdeen wedding dress special. Snoring peacefully, he remained blissfully unaware of the Quarter Quell rules until lunchtime the following day.

During his increasingly rare lucid moments, Woof was aware that at seventy five years old, he'd already lived longer than the average citizen of district eight. He just felt sorry that one of his girls - as he thought of Selena and Cecelia - was going to have to go back into the arena too.

By teatime he had forgotten the whole conversation.

District 9. Abundance

District Nine used to hold just one dubious games record. After the seventy-fourth games, they gained a second.

They had had just three victors, now the lowest number of any district. Their first victor, Hordea, had won the seventh games and lived a happy life until her heart failed during the year of the sixty-fourth games.

Two years later her grandchild Emmer had become Nine's only male victor.

Abundance, known to all as Bunny, was a grandmother seven times over now. She wore her grey hair pulled back into a loose bun and favoured loose smock dresses in harvest colours. She had raised four children in Victors' Village. Now just her husband and youngest daughter shared the house, though the others were frequent visitors. Her whole extended family had come round to watch the mandatory viewing. If you had to watch the horse manure the Capitol churned out, you might as well watch it in comfort. One big happy family had laughed and chattered and shared crisp wholegrain toast with lashings of butter as one increasingly opulent dress after another was paraded before their eyes.

Then they'd sat through the announcement in stunned silence, and now fourteen people were trying to figure out the right thing to say. Abundance couldn't stand that. She forced the most accepting smile she could muster, pulling herself upright in her chair.

"Now I don't want any of you wasting your money sponsoring me, you hear? I'm fifty nine years old and we all know that Capitol doctor gave me five years, tops, when I had my last round of radiotherapy. I've had three of those years already and if I have to forfeit the last two in order to go quickly and quietly, well...I suppose I can deal with that.' Heck, she even managed a chuckle "And if Granite goes in he'll make sure I don't feel a thing"

"Always knew you had a soft spot for him..." muttered her husband.

Abundance laughed "Like a boy from Two would ever have looked in my direction. He just who won the year before me. We...understood each other." She looked into the eyes of the man she'd been married to for thirty seven years and, as one, they reached for each others' hands. Sky, their youngest, moved closer to her older sister, her head lowered.

A knock on the door sounded incredibly loud in the quiet room. "I'll go"

"Mum, you don't have to..."

"I do. Mentor's duties, unless I'm very much mistaken."

"I can go and let them in..."

"Not tonight. I think Emmer and I need a little Victor time. I'll be back soon"

Reaching for her walking sticks, Abundance levered herself to her feet and made her way across the room. She was already breathing heavily when she got to the front door. She opened it to face a youth in their middle twenties, sandy-haired like so many of that district, wide eyes and breathless.

"I came as soon as Mum stopped crying. I told her it was okay, but... Aunt Bunny?"

District 9. Emmer

I had to force myself not to hammer on the door in the blind panic I was feeling. My mother was crying. My father was crying. My sister was crying. Wasn't I supposed to be the one crying and them comforting me? I don't know how I managed to get away, to tell them that I was fine, I'd deal with it, I just wanted to take a walk.

I didn't want to take a walk. I needed my mentor.

She's not really my Aunt, of course. But she's always been around, as long as I could remember. When I was tiny and used to play in my grandmother's garden she was there, either visiting or just across the square. Her second daughter Wheat was only two years older than me and we'd play together, slipping out to hide in the fields that backed onto Victors' village. We loved seeing how well we could hide without our mothers finding us. I loved following Wheat around. I felt more like myself when I was with her. I felt safe. I felt invincible.

And I grew up knowing what it was like to be a hero, because my two favourite role models were the victors of District Nine.

Then I got reaped when I was sixteen and I was terrified. Sure, I was tall, I was strong, but I was hardly a killer, not like the Careers who'd trained for half their lives.

I got lucky. My arena was a massive wheat pasture, going on for what felt like miles. The one landscape that actually gave me an edge over the other tributes. I only had to use my scythe twice. I survived.

And I learned something. The Capitol had a word for people who felt like me, the ones who weren't quite comfortable with what everyone else expected them to be.

Aunt Bunny understood.

My family didn't understood, but they were happy to use they pronouns because it made me comfortable.

"Let's take a walk" said Aunt Bunny, strapping on the backpack that held her portable oxygen tank. I knew what that meant.

I knew better than to try and help her walk.

We walked for precisely two minutes until we got round the back of the empty houses. Backing onto the grain fields, nobody could see us here. So nobody could see as I flipped the latch on a wide downstairs window and we both climbed inside.

Here, in this deserted, supposedly unused house we had dragged a bed onto the kitchen floor. Books in the bathroom. And one room painted entirely bright orange. Nobody ever came in here, so nobody had any idea. It had been Aunt Bunny's idea, after I'd won my games and didn't think I'd ever sleep through the night again. We stole another house, and did whatever we wanted with it.

I'd punched three holes in one of the bedroom walls and sat sobbing because I was a terrible person, a failure because I couldn't cope with the guilt, nobody in the world could possibly be as disgusting as me.

She'd peed out of an upstairs window that same night just to prove me wrong.

We made our way through the darkened rooms and settled ourselves on the stairs. It was comfortable; we'd covered them with cushions and blankets to wrap ourselves in on cold winter nights. I finally let out a sob and leaned my head on her shoulder.

"I don't want to go back either" she said.

We were both quiet. And then I whispered "I'm the male victor. They'll make me be a boy again"

"No. They can _call_ you whatever they want, but nobody's ever going to change who you are. I call you a purple pig, doesn't make you a purple pig, does it?"

For the first time that evening, I smiled.


End file.
